News

Robot Couriers

Friday, 22 Jul 2016

From this month, pedestrians in the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland will begin sharing their sidewalks with robot couriers. The self-driving delivery droids are being rolled out as part of a pilot by Starship Technologies, working with a number of major industry partners.

Starship Technologies was set up in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, with the aim of revolutionizing local deliveries. The robots are designed for delivering packages, groceries and food to consumers in a 2-3-mi (3-5-km) radius and travel at a "brisk walking speed" of 4 mph (6 km/h).

They are built with off-the-shelf components, such as an Nvidia Tegra K1 processor , to keep the costs down. They also make use of a number of conventional cameras, a 360-degree camera, infrared and ultrasonic sensors to navigate autonomously, but are monitored by human operators in control centers who can take control at any time if required.

Starship has been testing the robots in 12 countries for nine months. Around 5,000 mi (8,000 km) are said to have been covered and over 400,000 people encountered without any accidents.

The pilot, however, will provide the first opportunity to test the robots for real deliveries and to introduce them to the general public. It will also allow Starship to better understand and design a robotic delivery service.

Starship Technologies was set up in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, with the aim of revolutionizing local deliveries. The robots are designed for delivering packages, groceries and food to consumers in a 2-3-mi (3-5-km) radius and travel at a "brisk walking speed" of 4 mph (6 km/h).

They are built with off-the-shelf components, such as an Nvidia Tegra K1 processor, to keep the costs down. They also make use of a number of conventional cameras, a 360-degree camera, infrared and ultrasonic sensors to navigate autonomously, but are monitored by human operators in control centers who can take control at any time if required.

Starship has been testing the robots in 12 countries for nine months. Around 5,000 mi (8,000 km) are said to have been covered and over 400,000 people encountered without any accidents.

The pilot, however, will provide the first opportunity to test the robots for real deliveries and to introduce them to the general public. It will also allow Starship to better understand and design a robotic delivery service.